Two remarkable talks by Dr. Robert Moore on the archetypes of the mature masculine – King, Warrior, Magician and Lover – delivered in Chicago in the late 1980s.
The second talk focuses on the Magician and Lover archetypes. The first talk can be found here
The Archetype of Initiation
By Robert L. Moore
Following the line of thought of anthropologists Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner and scholar of religions Mircea Eliade, psychoanalyst Robert Moore added “THE ARCHETYPE OF INITIATION: Sacred Space, Ritual Process, and Personal Transformation.”
Van Gennep began with the three passages (separation, liminal, and aggregation) of initiatory ritual. Turner expanded the concept of liminal (on the threshold) to include more specific dynamics of liminal space. Eliade, from his perspective, has emphasized the combination of hierophany (manifestation of the sacred) and kratophany (manifestation of power) as a necessary part of initiatiory ritual worldwide.
In this book Robert Moore detailed the need and role of ritual elders in creating and containing the sacred space required in all transformative initiations in human experience. Though the book is fairly specialized, it is written with a minimal amount of technical terms. “The Archetype of Initiation” was originally presented as a series of lectures and essays from 1984 to 1995.
Psychotherapists, leaders in the Men’s Movement, as well as people involved in youth counseling, prison rehabilitation, clergy, and even bewildered parents of teens will find this book very useful.
Dr. Robert Moore was Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Spirituality in the Graduate Center of the Chicago Theological Seminary where he was the Founding Director of the new Institute for Advanced Studies in Spirituality and Wellness. An internationally recognized psychoanalyst and consultant in private practice in Chicago, he served as a Training Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and was Director of Research for the Institute for Integrative Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the Chicago Center for Integrative Psychotherapy. Author and editor of numerous books in psychology and spirituality, he lectured internationally on his formulation of a neo-Jungian psychoanalysis and integrative psychotherapy. His most recent books included THE ARCHETYPE OF INITIATION: Sacred Space, Ritual Process and Personal Transformation; THE MAGICIAN AND THE ANALYST: The Archetype of the Magus in Occult Spirituality and Jungian Psychology, and FACING THE DRAGON: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity.
More about Robert Moore, including free downloads: robertmoore-phd.com
See also The Crisis of the Masculine by Robert Moore